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If anything, I think this will force the record industry to produce more albums
that good if they want to continue to sell full length works.  Albums like
"Brothers in Arms" will still sell.   Other crap full of filler cuts will not.

-AP

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in response to
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:I think the music industry being forced to bring their prices down isn't
something any one in their right mind would disagree with. What does worry me
is the idea of these 'perfect' cds you can create yourself on iTunes and the
comment that most CD's contain a couple of good tracks and mostly filler. What
ever happened to the idea of an album hanging together as a whole rather than
being a series of singles that can chart and sell individually? Most of my CDs
don't have anything that could chart as a single (and not much you'd sing to
yourself) but artists and producers work hard to give you a whole 70 minute
music experience you can listen and which can take you through an emotional arc
(beep beep beep pretention alert!!). For example I bought the David Bowie album
Heathen in 2002 because I love Bowie and his voice but never played it enough
until a few months ago when I spent a whole Saturday just listening to it and
allowed myself to 'learn' how it plays - now I love it but there wouldn't be a
single solitary track I'd download off iTunes and I'd be hard pressed to find
anything for a playlist. If we follow through the idea of 'make your own' CDs
then those artists that are still trying to create entire albums that express
something or evolve will be forced into shunting out "Now That's What I Call
Radiohead Vol 92" - ! iTunes has it's place but it's not to replace CDs. in
response to Universal Music Group lowered its prices on CD's by $3 to
retailers, and suggests retailers take another $3 off as well. By putting a
suggested price on the cover of the CD's, Universal is putting pressure on
retail chains to make a little less per unit on these things while at the same
time taking less themselves. In practice, this brings CD pricing in-line with
the $1/song pricing that iTunes and others are seeing success with -- but its
still not quite right. With iTunes you can pick the songs you want. For that
same 10-15 bucks, you can assemble a "perfect" cd. While the pricing cuts are
great, ultimately the marketplace will now have to vote on the value of the
album overall verses the value of the individual tune. Lets face it, not all
albums are great. How many have you seen with one or two good bits of work, and
a ton of filler? The market isn't going to accept that. Its clear that even
near term those one or two hits are going to be purchased on-line or shared.
Only solid albums will be purchased. This isn't new though. The hit single 45
rpm record was the way to buy these kinds of 'one hit wonders' years ago. The
music industry faces not one but two challenges from the on-line downloads.
They're focused on the first -- offering a value proposition that favors paying
for music over piracy. Ultimately, legal challenges are going to fail and
they'll have to increase their own value or lower their price. The newest
tactic, using a hash value of downloaded music to prove its being traded won't
work long. The nature of the technology is such that someone will write a
filter that randomly changes files as they are downloaded in very small ways
and the whole hash comparison will be out the window. The longer term challenge
-- and a much harder one -- is that they'll have to re-evaluate what value they
add to the musicians. When a musician can take advantage of secure technology
and allow their own music to be directly downloaded at 50 cents per song and
there is no major production cost, there is no major transportation,
warehousing, or distribution cost -- what is the value the record industry
adds? Marketing. The record industry becomes a for-hire marketing business.
That's half of what they are now. Right now, they offer marketing and
distribution. For that, artists fork over the majority of revenue from their
work. That is, of course, totally antithetical to what copyright laws were
intended to do (IMO). Cost cutting is just beginning in this, the last industry
to have essentially unlimited funding for its marketing, research, and grossly
inappropriate spending departments.
http://www.nydailynews.com/business/story/114452p-103281c.html